This exciting book explores motivation, characteristics, and examples how network application engineers benefit from new store-and-forward protocols. The motivating factors that caused delay tolerant networks (DTNs) to be standardized are discussed, as well as the unique nature of applications running within a DTN. The underpinnings of DTN development are explored, including space-based networking, Internet of Things communications, and delayed-overlays as a means of achieving quality-of-service. Topics such as RESTful interfaces and research into autonomy and open-loop systems are discussed.
The motivation and design of DTNs is addressed, along with design patterns and examples of delay-tolerant application development and deployment. Cases involving terrestrial Internet encounters problems, like those that define challenged networks, are identified and standard solutions to those problems are presented. Readers learn how to cache content in the network, perform open-loop autonomous control of nodes, annotate messages to reduce traffic needs, perform distributed error correction, in-network data fusion, and regional administration. Special considerations unique to DTNs that must be accommodated by delay-tolerant applications, examples of using these patterns, and a case study for their deployment are also included. This book is intended as a resource for network engineers, systems engineers, and communication system architectures to use in the specification, design, implementation, and verification of advanced, high reliability networks.
